


when I feel what I feel

by seoulsoo



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst and Feels, Bad Boy Mark Lee (NCT), Coming of Age, Consensual Underage Sex, Frank Ocean was heavily used, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Implied/Referenced Underage Drinking, M/M, No Plot/Plotless, Slice of Life, They Both Die At The End - Freeform, Underage Drug Use, age is a limbo but everything is consensual, but its okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:48:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27873294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seoulsoo/pseuds/seoulsoo
Summary: Donghyuck meets Mark again at a time in his life full of uncertainty.
Relationships: Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Mark Lee, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 26





	when I feel what I feel

**Author's Note:**

> this is ??? a thought piece with not much structure. also my first published piece. also not beta'd hehehe. thanks for coming along for the ride! 
> 
> Heavily influenced by At Your Best (You Are Love) by Frank Ocean, and the entire Blond album.

It was a familiar walk from Donghyuck’s house to the 7/11 down the road on the corner. When he was younger, him and his friends made it regularly during the summer to pass the time. Jaemin would always get that sour bug drink and it would turn his teeth blue for the afternoon. Jeno would smile at him so wide his eyes would disappear. It was foolish for Donghyuck not to have seen it then, the way they so clearly were met to be together. Renjun had cried years later in Donghyuck’s arms when he found out, they made that same trip down to the store and stole a Four Loko to numb the pain. Donghyuck’s brother, Taeyong, took the blame for the puke stains on the basement carpets they had left behind in their wake. 

Despite the familiarity, there was something eerie about the walk when you were alone. In a small town like theirs, walking was already considered somewhat of a taboo. Compared to the time he was in the city with Mark and many others had used their legs to take them to where they were meant to be, walking even just around the block seemed like you were doing something wrong. 

The snow hadn’t helped. Donghyuck was pretty sure he heard his mom say school was canceled today due to the ice. It was still fall, but the leaves had long since left and icicles now hung from the branches. It looked almost peaceful, a fresh coat of snow had fallen and the piles of snow laid untouched, soft-like. He couldn’t help but reach out and put his handprint in it, his fingers cold and wet the rest of the way to the store. 

The lights from the 7/11 were the only source of brightness in the neighborhood at this hour. A sharp fluorescent illumination in an otherwise dark town. It was busier than Donghyuck had expected, but his town had always housed those who would hide during the day. An older man asked Hyuck for a light as he went in, he shook his head and tried not to focus on the far outlook in the man’s eyes, as if he wasn’t really asking anyone in particular, and he definitely tried not to focus on how much it reminded Donghyuck of Mark. 

It was nights like tonight when the town was quiet and no one was out driving due to the slick roads- and his parents were snoring in the room over, their tv light shining under their door, Taeyong was off at college somewhere, probably in the corner of some house party- that Hyuck felt a nostalgic sort of longing for something that hadn’t occurred yet, a future unknown to him that he had missed. He felt entirely like himself and like a stranger all at once. Lying in his bed in complete darkness, the same bed from his childhood, where he first kissed Mark, a tangle of limbs in bedsheets. It tasted like Carmex. Living and growing in the same house and suddenly feeling every memory and every discovery he ever had and feeling unfamiliar in the skin he has now. A thin layer of sweat rested on his body and he could catch a whiff of grease from his hair whenever he rolled the right way. A sort of restlessness that came with growing older.

So, Donghyuck decided to go out, to breathe, to get some sunflower seeds and a peach tea, and try not to think. 

The cash register worker had barely noticed Donghyuck’s arrival, a cigarette hanging from the woman’s lips which Hyuck decided not to comment on despite him knowing it probably wasn’t allowed. “Can I get a scratch-off?” Donghyuck asks, not sure why. Maybe he’ll get lucky. Maybe it’ll take his mind off of things.

“You 18?”

“No?” Hyuck says. 

The girl grabs him one with a snowman on it. 

He sits on the curb out front to do it. His butt wet from the ground, his shoes covered in the gross mush of slosh from snow, ice, and tires culminating. He’s cold, his cheeks feel like they have frozen over and he’s sure his nose is running but he’s not ready to go home yet. 

He uses his bitten nails to scrape off the ticket, forgetting to have asked for a coin and not wanting to push his luck with the girl anymore— already feeling like a bother. 

He wins $2, smiles to himself, and throws the ticket away. The sticky gray paper he scratched off stuck under his nails leading him to bite at his thumbs even more. 

He has his thumb halfway down his mouth, a hangnail peeled off and bleeding when he hears him.

“Hyuckie?” 

Donghyuck turns around and standing in front of him is his first love, Mark Lee. He’s wearing his green army coat that Donghyuck had helped sow patches into, an oddball of band names and cheap truck-stop quotes. Donghyuck’s favorite was the “American by Birth, Trucker by Choice.” one they had picked up on a ride from Vancouver to Portland. It was Donghyuck’s first time leaving the country, and Mark made them stop at the gas station right beyond the border to take a picture. 

“Point north and we can say that’s Canada.” Mark had told him, and Donghyuck did as he said. The light flashed and Mark would later take the camera into Johnny’s photo center to get his film developed and he would hang the photo on his sun visor.

Mark’s favorite patch was the mix of the Korean, Canadian flag that Hyuck has stitched together for his 17th birthday. They sewed it onto his jacket, right above his heart, later that night.

Mark’s holding a six-pack of Busch Light, indicating to Hyuck that the older boy must have made a late-night run to the store just like he did. He looks behind him and sees the same red beat down Pontiac Mark’s driven since he was 13 unofficially, 15 legally. The exhaust blows out smoke, the neon blue radio shining even through the tinted windows.

“Mark.”

“Uh, what's up? What are you doing here?” He asks the younger, a glint in his eye of either nerves or excitement. Donghyuck can't place it.

“Just, getting a snack. Why are you here?” He doesn’t mean for the question to come out as aggressively curious as it does but he hasn’t seen Mark in almost two years, since he went off to college and decided Donghyuck didn't have a place in his new life. 

“Back for break… my mom she hasn’t been feeling great so figured I could spend some time with her.”

“Cool.” He says, which is quite lame. "I mean not cool, her being sick but you being back..."

And Mark smiles at that, the same smile Donghyuck had fallen in love with when he was 14 and Mark had pushed him into his pool. Donghyuck's phone we completely ruined and his mom bitched him out about it for months, but it was worth it to see Mark's face light up with mischief. 

"It is cool. It is." 

It's awkward then, quiet. They both had forgotten how to talk to the other, or rather, how not to. Mark fidgets a bit where he stands, a motion that Donghyuck is surprised to see from him. Perhaps he adopted it while in college.

“Hey, listen Hyuck, actually, there was something I had wanted to talk to you about. I know it's been a while and it’s really not my place to say anything but Jaemin reached out to me a couple of months ago. Said you’ve been hanging out with Yangyang and his friends? That's not really your scene is it?” 

Of course, of course, Mark Lee had to lecture him after seeing him for the first time in years. Of course, Jaemin reached out to Mark out of all people. Yangyang was similar to Mark, a boy born on the wrong side of town with a taste for adrenaline and a knack for bad decisions. Donghyuck would be lying if he said he hung out with him for any other reason than to chase the thrill he once got with Mark.

“It's just, I don’t really like you hanging out with them, I don't trust them.”

Donghyuck didn’t even try to hide his annoyance that Mark just showed up like this and now had the audacity to tell him he shouldn’t hang out with who he did. Not when Mark had abandoned him, left him behind without a thought after showing Hyuck what all the world has to offer. 

Mark smiles, a smirk so full of confidence that whenever Donghyuck saw its rare appearance he was convinced the world was made simply for Mark, Donghyuck’s presence around him a miracle he knew to not take advantage of him. “Besides, I thought you only liked breaking the law with me. I’m the only one you can do that shit with right?” 

Donghyuck hated Mark. He hated that he was right. Mark was his first so many things. He was like an enigma to him. Donghyuck was raised in a three-pillar colonial home with a big white door, an equally big yard. Mark trailed the railroad tracks after school instead of going home. His hair dyed various shades of the rainbow depending on his mood, a cheap dollar store dye to thanks. His simplicity that Donghyuck, unfamiliar with someone like him, mistook as complexity. 

He hated that Mark took his all from him. He touched Donghyuck on a mattress in a trailer park. No heat in the cold air, a few blankets covering the skin. The sun rising through the blinds as Mark muffled Donghyuck’s moans with his hand. A bite here, a fistful of hair. A kiss on his shoulder blade. Mark’s pale skin and Donghyuck’s tanned, a sunburn still healing from the weeks of summer before. They left the football game early to drink with the gang at Mark’s place— his parents working the night shift. Half burned cigarettes and empty beer bottles scattered about on the floor. Everyone had left but them, Mark propped up on his arm, tracing alongside Donghyuck’s spine. When Mark pushed inside him, taking all control, Donghyuck saw red.

“Does Yangyang treat you good Hyuckie?” He knew Mark was mocking him, attempting to pry open the part of him that Hyuck was so good at keeping locked away under sarcastic smiles and his sharp tongue. 

Mark’s ability to twist and turn him, unscrew Donghyuck until everything was loose was what made him so unnerving, so spectacular.

Donghyuck’s lips are on Mark’s before either can really realize what the others doing. Mark’s hands immediately pulling him closer. Fingers slipping under his shirt, coldness spreads on his back. And he’s kissing Mark so fiercely but Mark doesn't let Donghyuck take the lead instead, biting at Hyuck's bottom lip until it bleeds. They pull away and a glob of spit trails off Hyuck's lip, his blood mixed in and he thinks he can taste weed on Mark's tongue. He doesn't mind, he's tasted it before. 

“Please baby.” A plead without an explanation but Donghyuck knows Mark well enough to know he’s desperate, the way he cuffs his hair, pulling the boy closer and whines for him shows he’s teetering on the edge.

-

Donghyuck wakes the next morning near the creek, under the railroad bridge, in the backseat of Mark’s car. The day is gray and cold and Donghyuck can see his breath. Mark’s still asleep, his jacket covering his chest like a blanket. His bare, pale collarbones poking out from underneath it. Donghyuck’s freezing and sticky and has a throbbing headache although he’s pretty sure he didn’t drink anything. His last memory was Mark perched on his elbow staring down at him. Hyuck was idly tracing Mark’s face. He thought he heard birds in the distance. “I mean something to you.” Mark had said in Korean, or maybe it was a question? Donghyuck didn’t know, his eyes slowly slipping into sleep.

When Mark wakes up shortly after, he doesn’t comment on the events from before. He steps out of the car to piss while Hyuck grabs some napkins with food stains already on them out of the glove box to wipe himself off. It’s early still, the sun has barely risen above the horizon. 

Mark offers to drive him home and Donghyuck accepts, wanting to spend as much time as he can with the older boy before he’s forgotten again. Mark, he allows himself to think hopefully, must be feeling similar as he chooses the long route through the old highway around the town. A soft Frank Ocean song filters through the radio.

The roads smooth and empty, a stray car passing, and Donghyuck let his mind wander on them, feeling completely aware of how each person lived their own life and had their own stories and this was his, but it wasn’t just his story but Mark’s too. He wondered if anyone drove past gave a damn about them too. Mark’s eyes were dilated, probably taking a hit when he had stepped out before. Donghyuck was used to it by now, too many late-night escapades and ditching party’s early for it to not be familiar. He stared at the older boy next to him and kept thinking how nice it would be to kiss him. 

Donghyuck’s house approaches them closer and closer, a symbol of reality that Donghyuck's not ready to face. He sees the light on in the kitchen and jots up a lie for his whereabouts. He’ll say he was with Yangyang and suffer from another scolding but he can’t imagine it would hurt any more than Mark’s did.

Mark pulls onto a side street to make sure his car isn’t seen, a habit he had picked up on after years of practice. 

Donghyuck reaches to the back, grabbing his sunflower seeds and Snapple before getting out. Walking away, he hears Mark yell.

“Hyuckie,” he says through the rolled down the passenger window, he looks…nervous. A look that doesn’t fit on Mark’s face. One that Hyuck has only seen maybe once before, the night before he had left for college. He had crawled into Hyuck's bedroom faded, unable to stand but with tears down his cheeks, a brown stain on the collar of his shirt that Donghyuck guessed was puke. Mark had gone out with Jeno, snuck into the bar on main street. Behind the bar, if you knew how to look, there were always other means of having fun. Mark had taught Donghyuck that. 

"I don't want to leave you" he had whispered into Hyuck's hair that night while they cuddled in bed. He had to, though, his mom had been clean lately, saving up to put Mark into a trade school about three hours from here. They had family up north Mark could crash with. It would be foolish to turn it down-- especially when it was Mark's only escape from this life. 

When they woke up the next day, Mark was gone. It was the last time they had spoke, until now.

“There’s more than this, out there, you know. So much more than this place. And you’re gonna see that all someday.” He nods and smiles. Donghyuck smiles back and Mark zooms away. He feels like puking. 

-

Next spring, Donghyuck gets accepted into some prestigious university abroad to study global security. His parents pay for his plane ticket and Taeyong buys him a new computer, which Donghyuck uses to fill his Facebook with pictures of his new life, his new thoughts, his new confidence as he grows and learns and starts discovering what it is like to feel like your apart of something greater. He hasn’t talked to Yangyang or his friends since the day Mark dropped him off, and his new friends find pleasure outside of bloody fistfights and car races. Still, a part of Hyuck longs for the adrenaline he had felt in his youth, a bit of the immortality he had tasted when running from the cops with Mark after a party gets busted. They’d hide in the woods for hours and laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. 

When he comes back for holiday, he finds out Mark didn’t ever return home like he said he was going to. He simply drove away, not stopping to see his mom.

About two hours later a truck heading down the wrong side of the highway slams into his car and Mark, forgetting to wear his seat belt like always, flies out the front window and is killed instantly. He’s cremated because it’s all his family can afford but the local high school plants a tree with his ashes in memory.

When he goes back to school, he meets Wong Yukhei. He’s goofy and tall and looks at Donghyuck with a curious expression that excites him. Six months later, Yukhei asks Hyuck if he loves him, if he ever thinks he could in the future. It hurt to be honest, to tell Yukhei a part of him will always be with Mark. Yukhei’s big puppy dog eyes stare at Donghyuck like they’re truly looking at him, a skill only Mark had managed to do. It's unnerving, the way Yukhei’s able to see each crevice of Donghyuck in ways he had not even seen himself, peeling back and revealing a boy who was lost himself. So, he lies. He tells Yukhei yes, he could, in the future. 

They move to the city and then to a new city and a new one and Donghyuck refuses to buy a car, forcing them to walk most days. Yukhei and him marry and they adopt a child and one day all that’s left of Mark to Donghyuck is a blink in his youth, a bright & long blink full of desperation and longing & the thought that Donghyuck would have done anything for Mark. He lives until 74, old but not old enough. Wealthy, but not wealthy enough. Loved, but not loved enough. Happy, but not happy enough. 

He knows Yukhei is there next to him, he’s holding his hand so tightly. Their daughter and her daughter sitting at the edge of the bed. When he closes his eyes, he feels everything all at once. He remembers the taste of his mom's stew on a cold winter day. He hears his dad’s drunken slur of laughter. He feels Taeyong’s fingers play with his hair messily. He can see Jaemin and Jeno laughing in that 7/11, and Renjun singing at his and Yukhei’s wedding. He imagines his thighs sticking to the leather in Mark’s car on a summer night and Mark's hand rubbing on his knee. He can almost taste the creamy coffee from the local diner they went to on Sunday mornings hungover and sore. 

He closes his eyes and clings to these memories. 

It's silent, and Donghyuck thinks he’s achieved the impossible feat of finally stopped thinking.

Then, he hears. 

“Hyuckie?”

And opens his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! This is my first ever fic ? A lot of it is thoughts I had when I was 18/19 that I hope others can relate to. Donghyuck and Mark just helped me be an outlet for doing that. I cried when I finished. Let me know your thoughts :)


End file.
